


The Girl In The Alley

by gauntTwister



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Feels, abuse mention, phicphightstuff2k19
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-13 23:57:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21006311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gauntTwister/pseuds/gauntTwister
Summary: Maddie finds a little girl down an alley who sets off all their ghost equipment.  And she looks just like Danny.Prompt by Quishaphantom (Tumblr)





	The Girl In The Alley

It was almost one in the morning. For Maddie Fenton, it had been a very long night. She'd watched the moon crawl halfway across the sky during her search for the dead, and she was beginning to think that, perhaps, she wouldn't find any. It would be a shame, too - she'd even brought her brand-new spirit-smasher with her in the hope that she'd be able to try it out. Instead, the evening had been a disappointment. 

She paused on the street corner, specter-detector in hand, and frowned. The screen had been infuriatingly empty all evening, and she was increasingly suspicious that some of the wiring inside was shot and that she'd have to take it home and put it on her list of things to dismantle and repair. She couldn't remember the last time she'd come out this late and there hadn't been any ghosts; she knew, and had known for some time, that there were never any out before ten, no matter what time of year or how early the sun went down, but midnight was supposedly the haunting hour - _and yet,_ she thought dryly to herself. With a sigh, she turned and cast a glance back down the block to FentonWorks. It was getting pretty late. Maybe she should call it a night and get the specter-detector fixed in the morning. 

A quick flash of movement in the alley across the street made her turn. Her first thought was _ghost!_ but she scolded herself. It had been a long night, she was jumpy, and she hadn't seen so much as a wisp of ecto-energy all evening; she was getting ahead of herself and she knew it. She remembered, as the rational part of her mind chimed in, that there was a little gray cat that hid around the alleys in town. _That's probably all it is,_ she reasoned, and wrote it off at that. If her specter-detector hadn't begun to beep when she'd crossed the street to go home, she would have thought nothing more of it at all. 

Maddie paused, casting a glance down to the screeching device in her hand. A single blip appeared on the screen, and a second later it slid further down into the alley. Her heart leapt; maybe she would have a chance to use her new spirit-smasher after all. The weapon - a hammer-like thing that collapsed oh-so-neatly amongst the baubles on her keychain - was drawn, and her movements were silent. All of a sudden on the hunt, she kept her eyes on the darker corner of the alley as she crept closer. _I know you're there, ghost. Too late for you._

Two bright eyes peered out from the darkness, and Maddie faltered. What she'd found wasn't a ghost but a girl hiding behind the dumpster. Maddie was struck by just how small the girl was - and all alone, no less! - and something in her gut pulled at her. _What's she doing out here? Poor thing's all by herself, and probably cold - someone's got to help her._ The hunt was abandoned; she knelt down, and spoke only in a whisper: "Hey - don't be scared, now, I'm not going to hurt you, I promise." 

The girl said nothing, eyes locked on Maddie. 

"What are you doing out here all by yourself?" 

"Holding myself together," said the girl, shrinking away under her hoodie. She looked down for a moment, as if concentrating very hard on something, and then met Maddie's eyes again. 

Maddie asked her: "Where are your parents? I'm sure they must be worried sick about you - " 

The girl shook her head. "I don't have any." 

"No parents?" 

The girl shook her head slowly. 

"What's your name, dear?" 

The girl flinched. After a moment of hesitation, her gaze fell again. "Danielle." 

"Danielle," Maddie echoed, "and you don't have a place to stay, do you? It's not safe out here at night - " 

"I know," was all Danielle said. She pulled her arms a little closer around herself, and slipped her knees under her hoodie. 

Maddie's heart broke. _All alone out here, and no parents - the poor dear!_ The mother in her swelled like a brooding hen, and she held out one gentle hand. "Won't you come home with me, Danielle? I couldn't bear to leave you out here on the streets - I'll make up the spare room for you." 

Danielle said nothing. She stared up at Maddie, as an animal might stare from within a trap, and after a moment of hesitation she nodded slowly. One hand came out from the hoodie and took Maddie's - it was ice-cold, Maddie noticed - and she pulled herself gingerly to her feet. 

Maddie straightened up again. She couldn't believe it - _and I thought it was going to be a ghost! I probably scared her out of her wits!_ She'd be making some calls in the morning, after they'd both gotten some decent sleep, and after the poor kid had been fed. Something about her reminded Maddie of her own son; perhaps that was why she already felt so strongly. The mother-hen had decided for her, and only as she led the way back down the sidewalk to FentonWorks did she concretely realize that. It hadn't been a split-second decision; there had been no decision at all. Danielle needed to be kept safe. That was absolute. 

The front door opened without a sound, and Maddie led Danielle inside. The lights in the living room were still on but her husband had fallen asleep on the couch, and she didn't bother to wake him. She'd tell him what happened in the morning. She sat Danielle at the kitchen table; in the light, she saw even more of her son in her - the shape of her nose, the deer-in-the-headlights look when she was scared, even the way she seemed to fidget just so. If Maddie didn't know better, she almost would have thought they could have been siblings. 

As it was, she pulled a bin of leftovers from the fridge. She was certain the poor dear hadn't eaten - she was probably skin and bones under that big hoodie - and was suddenly of half a mind to adopt her on the spot. _At least then she'd have a bed every night,_ she thought, but dismissed the option. It was late, and she was tired; she'd make some calls in the morning after she'd slept to see if Danielle might have anyone that was missing her. In the meantime, she'd do the best that she could, which was to let the girl eat and give her someplace warm. 

Only when Danielle had slowed down did Maddie show her to the spare room. She flicked the light on and pulled the spare mattress from where it had been leaning against the far wall. "It isn't much," she said, "but it's better than being outside on a night like this. I'll get you some blankets from the hall closet - is there anything else I can get you?" 

Danielle sat on the side of the mattress. It smelled faintly of cardboard and dust - it had probably been in storage at some point - and she shook her head. "No. That's fine." 

"The bathroom's just across the hall. I'll see if I can find you a change of clothes for you tomorrow. Did you want me to leave the hall light on?" 

"I'll be alright." 

"If you need anything else, dear, let me know. I'll make you breakfast in the morning, and we can get everything sorted out then. Good night, Danielle," Maddie turned, leaving the door ajar, and let out all of her breath at once. _Poor kid._ She'd be occupied by the fussing mother-hen thoughts all night - she was certain of it - and, in an effort to ignore them, she went back out to the living room and sat on the edge of the couch by her snoring husband. She knew he wouldn't complain when she'd fill him in about what happened. He loved kids just as much as she did. She wondered, too, if he'd see the same pieces of Danny in the girl that Maddie had. The resemblance, the more she thought about it, was almost uncanny. _Siblings,_ she thought with a little smile, _I'd remember doing a little trick like that._

Her eyes fell to the specter-detector that she'd left on the end table. That was what she'd been doing, she remembered; she'd been caught up so suddenly with the little alley girl that she'd forgotten all about it. The ghost, she reasoned, had probably gotten away. She wasn't angry about that - what else was she supposed to have done, let the girl sleep with the stray cat in the streets? 

The thing in her hand was still blinking, and she realized that it was probably a malfunction. She picked it up anyway - it would give her something to fuss about other than Danielle, at least - and adjusted the dial on the side. _That can't be right,_ she thought with a frown, _it thinks there's a ghost in the spare room. I was just in there._ It was almost two in the morning, and she resigned herself to the fact that she wasn't going to get any sleep. Even if she didn't get the specter-detector fixed, she'd probably still be thinking about Danielle, so she may as well set to work on the thing anyway. That, at least, would give her hands something to do. 

The lab at night was somehow more peaceful than during the daylight hours, even though it was impossible to tell at a glance what time it was. _Maybe it's just because Jack's asleep,_ she thought with a little smile. She really did love the man, but sometimes his antics could get a little out-of-hand. Just last week he'd spilled a half-baked concoction across the lab; he'd taken care of the mess, of course - he was a bit clumsy, but not inconsiderate - but she could still tell where the floor had begun to warp, and one of the work-tables wasn't quite level anymore. She supposed, in the grand scheme of things, that it gave the place character. When they'd built the lab after moving into the house, it had been almost painfully sterile. It was like the morgue in some hospital someplace, where everything was cold and even the smallest sound echoed off the too-smooth walls, and it had taken almost a year to make it bearable. 

_Those were the days,_ went her mind as her hands pulled the device in front of her apart. She remembered how empty the house had been before the kids were born - she'd thought, at one point, that it was entirely too much space for just the two of them. The only reason they'd gotten it was because it had been dirt-cheap for a city house, and she knew the value had dropped even more when they'd built the Fenton Ops Center over the roof. Her husband, she remembered fondly, had had a great time with that one, even though it was a bit gaudy. 

It had just been "the house" for the first few months. "FentonWorks" had come later. Jack, she recalled, had gotten his hands on a laser-cutter one day, and had brought it home already very proud of it, and without any explanation of where it had come from or how he'd gotten his hands on it. He'd cut out the letters and had the sign up within a week. _Everyone will know it's our house now,_ he'd said with a grin. Maddie had added the arrow later as a joke, but Jack had been ecstatic. It suited the house, somehow, just as the house suited the two of them. 

Well, there were more than two of them by now - first Jasmine, then Danny, and now Danielle. Once Jasmine had started walking, she supposed, that was when it had begun to feel like a home. "The house" had become "FentonWorks" and there wasn't all this empty space and there was the patch in the drywall from when Danny and Jazz had been fighting one day when they were kids and she'd put her foot through; even Danielle would leave some character in the place, given time. Maddie realized, in that moment, that she was already thinking of Danielle as her own. Some part of her had taken the girl in, and was begging like a child for a puppy to let her stay. _She'd have the spare room,_ it said, _and Jack wouldn't mind. She's a lot like Danny. The two of them would get along._

_Please, can't we keep her?_

Maddie's rational mind refused, but there was nothing she could do, no amount of logic she could employ, to quiet the fussing of the hen. She sighed. Maybe she really should try and get some sleep, she thought, just as soon as she put the specter-detector back together. She'd finish that up, go to bed, and in the morning she'd find that she hadn't gotten too attached to the girl in the spare room, and she'd be thinking more clearly. That was it. 

Maddie frowned. She'd run a diagnostic and had pulled out the circuitboard of the device, hoping to find the source of the malfunction; somehow, nothing appeared to be wrong with the thing, and she knew that couldn't be right. The clucking mother was shoved aside in favor of the curious scientist, and she began to run down the list of other, more tedious-to-fix things that might be causing the error. "What in the world," she mumbled to herself. The thing had never given her any problems before this; she'd have noticed something was wrong with it long before it would have quit. She reluctantly assembled it and gave it a reboot. _If that doesn't do it, I'll come back to it in the morning. I'm too tired for this._ She set it down as it restarted, still not entirely satisfied. The screen defaulted back to the shape of the lab, with rough rectangles in place for tables and cabinets and such, and from somewhere outside of the room the blip appeared. 

Maddie turned. _That's where Danielle's sleeping,_ she remembered, and the fretting in her mind reared back up again. Maybe she'd check, just to make sure she was doing alright, before bed. She gave the defective machine one last glance before turning to go back upstairs. _What if there's not anything wrong with it at all?_ She groused to herself, decided that it was going to keep her up if there was no resolution whatsoever, and and slid into the rolling chair by the desktop computer. The Ops Center upstairs was where most of the hardware was stored, but the mainframe was just as easily accessible from the lab, and she tapped into it. The entire house was riddled with equipment (well, except for the kids' rooms - Jasmine had argued tooth and nail for their privacy whenever they'd mentioned installing anything up there), and she'd know in an instant if any sort of spectral anomaly had found its way inside. 

The little red dot on the screen was coming from the spare room. Maddie was hit with only an instant of panic - _the poor girl_ \- but smacked herself back into her senses before it could take over her. She knew there couldn't be a ghost in there. It would have caused such a _ruckus_ \- ghosts always did - and yet the little blip remained. 

She remembered the alley, and how she'd assumed at once that something was wrong with her equipment. It didn't take her long to reassess the situation; it was increasingly obvious that her readings were correct - or, at the very least, consistent - and those readings pointed to the girl upstairs. She wondered, cobbling together several different hypotheses, if perhaps Danielle _was_ the one setting off the spectral sensors. Had she been plagued by some sort of ghastly affliction? She didn't have any parents - were they the ones haunting her? Would they have reason to? It would certainly explain why she seemed so scared, even after she'd been given a safe place to sleep. Just thinking about it made Maddie a little bit sick; she couldn't imagine something like that hanging over the poor girl's head. 

She knew she probably wouldn't get any answers. Nosing about like that wasn't exactly breakfast conversation, and she knew that Danielle wouldn't offer up any of that sort of information. _She shouldn't have to,_ Maddie scolded herself, although the scientist in her wasn't content. She quieted it in an instant. _What am I supposed to do, take her down here for testing? I'd never scare the poor thing like that._ It was plain ridiculous, just as turning any of her equipment against her kids or her husband was plain ridiculous. Even thinking it was out of the question. 

She shut the lights off in the lab, deciding that she'd had just about enough, and shuffled upstairs. She'd have a talk with Jack in the morning about what had happened - she knew he'd understand. He loved kids. He'd want to help poor Danielle out too. She paused at the end of the hall, relenting just for a moment to the fussing of the hen, and peeked into the spare room. Danielle was asleep, and there were no ghosts; reassured, she went upstairs to bed. 

\- - - - 

Danielle was not asleep. 

The light had clicked off, and Maddie had gone, but the lump of dread in her stomach persisted. She'd left Amity Park almost a month prior, hoping to find a way to stabilize herself, and hoping to escape the wrath of her so-called father; she'd heard about a group of ectobiologists out on the east coast that she'd thought might be able to help her, but she'd never made it that far. By herself and with her ghostly powers steadily draining away, she hadn't even made it across state lines before she'd been forced to turn back. That left her at square one, worse off than when she'd left, and she knew she was running out of time. 

Her mind turned back to Maddie. She was certain that was the woman's name, despite the fact that they hadn't met. Her voice had been burned into Danielle's memory from the start - analyses and data readings, mostly - and now she'd met not a fizzling projection but a _real human_ that sounded exactly the same, and had taken Danielle home. To see her walking and breathing was disquieting, in the same way as hearing someone casually mention an event from so long ago that it might not have even taken place at all. It dredged up things from the haze of memory and brought them into a spotlight of clarity, showing details that, she found, she had preferred to keep obscured in shadow. 

She could hear Maddie's footsteps as the woman descended into the lab. She was tuned into the sound; she had been for as long as she could remember. The sound of her father's footsteps had been the same, and in the very beginning she'd look forward to them. Every time she closed her eyes, she could still see it: her containment chamber, dark on the inside except for a rectangle of glass that allowed her to see out into the surrounding laboratory. Her first memories came from the inside of that rectangle, isolated from anything he didn't want her to see or hear, back before she'd been given a name or a purpose. When the footsteps came down to the lab, it meant she'd get to see him. He would always talk to her, even if she wasn't allowed out of the chamber that day. At least there would be a little while when she wasn't all alone in the darkness. Sometimes, in those very early days, she'd be taken out and put to sleep. She'd always feel dizzy afterwards, and something would be different. _Different_ wasn't always bad; she'd woken up one day to find that she'd been given her very own legs, instead of the awkward and slimy tail that was there before. 

He'd begun to let her out of her chamber some days after that. He might dote upon her, or bring the cat down and allow the two of them to play for half an hour so that he could have some time to himself. On days like that, he would call her _precious_ or _dewdrop._ The first time that he'd allowed her outside to see the sun, he'd called her _dearest angel._ She'd been over the moon, rolling in the grass and flying clumsily over the impeccably-trimmed hedges because she wasn't good at it yet. The smell of rain three days after that had sent her into a fervor. He'd smiled, and said he'd loved her, and his quirky little lab-wife had said she loved her too. No matter how many times she said it, the sound was always the same. _I love you, dear._ She'd always be called _dear._ Back then, it had meant that she was safe. Those were the days when she thought she loved him, too. She'd forgive anything he said in the blink of an eye, and she'd do any favor he asked to please him. 

She hadn't realized until much later how few those days had been. More likely than not, she'd be downstairs. Her chamber, after a time, had become plain and cold. She was always more and more eager to be out of it, but he was unfailingly firm with her. _This is where you belong. It's safe for you here,_ he'd say, and that was always the end of the discussion. Sometimes, he'd allow her to watch him when he was doing complicated and important lab things; sometimes, he wouldn't, and she'd only hear vague sounds from somewhere out of her sight. She grew, slowly, to resent that little rectangle of her chamber, and sometimes she would think about telling her father so. 

The day when she asked him about it - oh, she asked _very_ nicely, for she didn't want him to think she was _demanding_ anything - there hadn't been much discussion. _Why don't you sleep in a chamber like that too?_ was what she'd said, hoping that it was an innocent enough question not to make him irritable. It had, although he didn't want her to think so; his face had gone blank, as if he was thinking, and he'd told her that it was because there was a piece of her that was missing. _I've been trying to get it back,_ he'd said, _and it's dangerous for you to be outside for too long without it._

He left the discussion at that, and would never explain anything further. There would always be a reason for that - perhaps he'd bring the cat down later to please her, or he'd treat her with an hour out in the beautiful moonlight - but it would seem to her afterwards that, perhaps, she was being a little bit silly about it. Perhaps it wasn't so bad to wait in the dark sometimes, just so long as she'd have another chance to practice her ghostly powers again next time. She'd been very proud whenever she'd make him smile. _You're picking this up so quickly!_ he'd say every time she demonstrated control over another one of her abilities. _You're coming along so well! Aren't you the special one!_

He'd only tell her she was special, she learned, when he wanted her to do things for him. It was only for important things, he said, not simple favors, and it was usually on his bad days. He had a fair number of those; in hindsight, she realized that he'd had quite a lot of them - he'd storm downstairs, cape flying behind him, yelling in a frenzy about _That Accursed Phantom._ Things would occasionally irritate him, but _That Accursed Phantom_ was always responsible for his rages. He would be uncontrollable on those days - _uncontrollable,_ at least until she promised to help him out somehow, or sneak somewhere and get a particular thing for him, or whatever dangerous task he'd have for her. That was the only thing that could calm him. She'd learned that one very quickly. As soon as she'd agree to it, he'd give her a huge sigh. _I knew that I could count on you,_ he'd say. _I was afraid I was going to really lose my temper. I'd feel simply awful if I hurt you._

_I always knew you were special._

For a very long time, she'd believed it. She'd believed everything that he'd told her. She'd taken it all, no matter what - why would he lie to her? He was her father. Fathers didn't lie; they didn't quarrel; if they punished or scolded, it was because she said something wrong, she broke something she wasn't supposed to touch, she deserved it, she hadn't tried hard enough. She hadn't been special that day. 

For a long time, Danny had been _That Accursed Phantom_ in her mind. That was what her father would call him; he'd told her to hate _That Accursed Phantom,_ and she had. He was _A Menace,_ he was _Dangerous,_ and, most importantly, he was the reason she still needed to sleep in that little pod that he knew she disliked. She was told that he had the piece of her that was missing - some crucial strand of morph DNA that would stabilize her forever, no matter how tired she was or how often she used her ghostly powers. He was keeping it for himself, said her father. He wouldn't share, even when Danielle's precious life was on the line. 

The day she'd actually met Danny, that had all changed. Everything came undone very quickly after that. She found out that, no, he wasn't _A Menace_ or _Dangerous,_ at least not to her, and she'd found out that she'd been used by her father from the very beginning, and that he didn't really care about her like he said he did. She was a mistake that had stuck around, just like the handful of others like her that he didn't want her to see. Her learned hatred for Danny vanished; she'd run away from it all after they'd made a wreck of the old man's home, and she thought that would be the end of it. She'd ventured out on her own, thinking that she'd be alright, but she'd discovered the hard way that she couldn't to it. Even when she ate whatever she liked, she would always need sleep in the stability of the containment chamber that her father had built for her. Without it, she was slowly melting away. 

Now here she sat, back in Danny's own house, having been taken in by _his mother_ of all people. Why was that woman just like the one back in her father's home? She hated it - it was as if she couldn't escape even the thought of him, no matter if she was with anyone she trusted or not. Danny was, without a doubt, the only one she trusted. Didn't that make it inevitable, then, that she would have come back here? 

She knew she had to talk to him. That was the only thing keeping her here. She wasn't sure how much longer she could stay whole if he didn't help her; she couldn't even risk transforming anymore, much less using any of her ghostly powers. Even running too fast in her human form had begun to make her palms and her feet slimy, and she couldn't bear to think of what might happen if she was caught in any sort of fight. _Just hold on until tomorrow. You'll be able to talk to him then._

Could she even do that? She knew how many ghosts came out at night. Who was to say that none of them could track her down if they really wanted to? Danny had a lot of enemies in Amity Park, he said once. He'd cautioned her against meeting them. Certainly, they'd be stronger than her. _Just because you're a ghost doesn't mean that none of the other ghosts can come after you. Dani, please be careful._ She'd been careful so far, hadn't she? Of course she had - and she was still falling apart. _Falling apart means no ghost powers._ That's what she'd told herself when she'd started to melt even in human form. _No ghost powers means stay out of trouble. When the sun comes up - that's when I'll talk to him. There won't be any ghosts out during the day, and I won't be by myself._

She wondered, though: could she even last that long? Even as she lay in the spare room, a small pool of ectoplasm had begun to stain the spare mattress. It hadn't been an issue when she slept, at least not yet, but that had been three days ago. She had to get sleep sometime. She was exhausted, and she was tired of _being_ exhausted. What would Danny say when she saw him? What would he do? She realized that he'd probably want to bring her home. His mother, he'd said once, was a ghost hunter. She had a ghost lab, and she knew enough to be able to help a ghost as well as hurt one. 

That didn't make her feel any better at all. It just brought her back to the very beginning - the inside of a lab, and her chirping voice reading off the results of the latest tests - and she knew she wasn't going to get any real sleep. 

\- - - - 

Danny had slept through class again. The final bell woke him, and only with the help of his invisibility powers did he sneak past Lancer to avoid being caught. He ducked behind one of the vending machines in the hall to reappear - no one ever seemed to notice that sort of thing anyhow, he found - and then vanished into the student body as he made his way back to his locker so that he could meet up with Sam and Tuck. 

Instead of either of them, he found Danielle. She sat, propped up against the lockers, with her hands shoved into her pockets. Her face was paler than he remembered, and she wore the sort of worried frown that told him she wasn't going to give him any good news. 

"Danielle?" he asked, reaching through his locker and pulling out his backpack, "What are you doing here? You don't look so good." 

Despite that she wasn't running on such an empty stomach that day, she didn't feel it either. She shook her head. "You remember those guys I was going to go see? The ones who were going to help me?" 

Danny's face fell. "They couldn't, could they? Man, I'm so sorry - " 

"I didn't even get that far," said Danielle, pulling herself up to her feet. "I had to come back - I don't know what else I can do, and now I'm starting to melt even in my sleep, and - " 

"Hey," said Danny, "We'll figure something out, okay? I can hide you in my room for the time being. I promise we'll find a way to get your strength back up." 

Dani hesitated. "Well. . ." 

"Well what?" Danny frowned, "Is there something else going on? Is there someone after you? Do I need to know about it?" 

Inside her pockets, Dani's hands balled in an effort to keep them from melting too much. She wouldn't meet Danny's eyes. "I was at your house last night." 

"You what?" 

Danielle flinched. "Your mom - her name's Maddie, isn't it." 

"Yeah. Did you see her?" 

"She found me outside last night," said Danielle, not wanting to think too much about being cornered like that, or the sudden kindness from the woman that was etched in entirely different ways in her mind. "She said I could stay." 

"Are you going to?" 

Dani shifted her weight onto one foot. "I don't know, she's - I don't think I can do it." 

"It's because of the ghost hunter stuff, isn't it," said Danny, "Listen, I can keep you under the radar - " 

"It's not that." 

Danny paused, not wanting to ask. "Did you tell her? She didn't _hurt_ you, did she - ?" 

"No," said Dani, although it was inadequate. How was she going to explain something like that? Knowing she couldn't, she added, "I don't like her." 

"You just don't like her?" Danny pressed, "But she might be the only one who can help you - " 

"I know this sounds stupid, okay? When I saw her it made me remember things - things from home, things I don't want to remember, all the stuff Dad said - " 

"Danielle. Listen to me." Danny put both hands on her shoulders, giving her a serious, unblinking stare. "I promise he's not going to hurt you. Even if he does somehow find out you're here - I'd kick his butt halfway across the state before I'd let him get near you. You know that, right?" 

Danielle nodded without looking up. "I know." 

"Look. I can't make you stay at my house if you really don't want to - but you have to have someplace that's safe, right?" 

"Well, there's that empty building a couple of blocks from - " 

"Dani, I'm serious!" Danny exclaimed, "Look at you! You're one ghost attack away from melting into a puddle and you're sleeping in abandoned buildings at night? When's the last time you've eaten?" 

"Last night," said Danielle, just to keep Danny from fussing about it. Before that, it had been four days ago. 

_"That's not good enough,"_ said Danny forcefully, "You think you're going to get any better out there? Wasn't that why you came to me?" 

She nodded, knowing he was right. "What else am I gonna do? I can't go back home." 

Danny's heart sank. The only other place with the right equipment had been Vlad's creepy basement, and there was no way he'd ever go back there if he could help it. Last time, Vlad had tried to force his transformation for one of those clones - he'd destroyed most of the lab during their escape, but it hadn't been easy. He'd watched himself melt away into ectoplasm, and he was still having nightmares about it. That had been one of the other clones - he couldn't let the same thing happen to Danielle. He'd never forgive himself. 

That really only left them one option. If she was going to be stabilized, his mother was going to be the one to do it; his father, not a delicate man, couldn't even be trusted with it. "Danielle. Listen. I know you're not gonna like it. I know I don't. You have to come home with me. I know my mom can help you - she can have my morph DNA too. I promise I'll be with you the whole time." 

"What?" Danielle frowned, "But your secret - " 

"Forget the secret," said Danny, more aggressively than he'd meant to. He paused for a moment, let all his breath out, and then continued: "I'd tell everyone in the world I was half-ghost if it would keep you whole. I can't watch you drain away like this. Look at yourself, Dani, you don't have a lot of time left and this is the only option we've got! Please, _please_ trust me on this one." 

Danielle just stood in rigid silence. She knew it wasn't fair for Danny to have to out himself like that - to the face of a ghost hunter, no less! - but she knew, too, that he was right. She had come to him for help, and she didn't have much left in her. Despite her best efforts, the tips of her fingers had begun to seep into the pockets of her hoodie, and she was certain she'd liquefy in an instant if she tried to use any of her powers. She'd thought, on the outset, that being fed would have helped. It didn't seem to; she might not even make it until nightfall if nothing was done. Finally, defeated, she just nodded. "Okay." 

"Come on," said Danny, "We gotta get you home." 

She followed him through the streets of Amity Park and back to FentonWorks, keeping her head down as if she'd been in trouble. She could feel herself slipping away a little at a time; her skin was slick all over, and her fingers had all but stuck together. Even when she concentrated, the best she could do was to keep from leaving slimy footprints on the sidewalk. 

The part of her that trusted Danny and the part of her that distrusted Maddie were in conflict. _What if she won't help me?_ She knew, all too well, what would happen then. She hated to think of it - she'd been on the run for so long, and had always been afraid of melting away and never being heard from again. She began to wonder, though - would that really be so different form melting away anyhow, and Danny having to watch? Wouldn't that, in some twisted way, be worse? 

\- - - - 

Maddie didn't hear the kids come home from school. She hadn't gotten much sleep, and had gone back to the specter-detector project first-thing in the morning. The thing, she'd decided, wasn't broken; what she'd found, instead, was that Danielle had left very early, and it was as Maddie had been putting the spare mattress back up that she'd noticed the little puddle of dried ectoplasm that had been left behind. Perhaps she'd get some answers after all, and she'd taken a sample downstairs for some tests. 

She'd spent most of the morning thinking of how she could help the poor dear out - she'd disappeared without a trace, though, and it had been before Maddie even had the chance to tell her husband about it. The fussing mother-hen voice in her had been scolding, as if she'd failed Danielle somehow, and she'd felt a twinge of guilt. _Was it something I said?_ She'd sighed, and had said it wouldn't get to her even though she'd spent the next two hours in a funk. 

At least, she consoled herself, she would get to run a handful of tests. Since Danielle had gone so abruptly, it was more to satisfy Maddie's curiosity than anything else, but it had made her feel somewhat better. Whatever was the matter with the girl, it was clearly because of ghosts - her current hypothesis was that there was at least one spirit, possibly several, that was haunting the girl directly. 

It was a little before noon when the first of the results came back, and they threw Maddie for a loop. Not only was this particular sample whole and consistent on a molecular level, she discovered, it was structured like living tissue - which meant, with any luck, that it might yield a strand of DNA for further testing. 

Maddie, of course, got all very excited about that. Whether or not she'd ever see Danielle again was wholly out of her hands now, and she told herself there was no real point in dwelling on it; she was much more certain about her discovery, and she knew she'd be spending all afternoon with an expanding set of notes. Post-human consciousness was one thing - physical evidence of said consciousness, which was different entirely from human remains, was mostly undocumented. _Undocumented,_ she thought smugly, going back up to secure the rest of the little puddle so that absolutely none of such a precious sample would be wasted, _we'll see about that!_ Once written, she knew, her papers would be a gold mine for future researchers. She and Jack could wring a year's funding out of them, if not more. The sour mood from earlier that morning had all but vanished, and she was simply giddy. 

She was giddy, at least, until the first of the DNA analyses came back. Her immediate thought was that the sample had been contaminated somehow - a worst-case scenario, in her mind, which would dictate the swift invalidation of all the tests she'd be running - but, refusing to cave so easily, she investigated further. Perhaps it wasn't the sample itself; perhaps there was a bias on one of the machines, or she'd overlooked something, or had failed to make any number of tiny-yet-crucial adjustments that would keep her data accurate and precise. Perhaps the molecular deconstructor was shot, and she'd have to find a way to replace it. _Wouldn't that be a nightmare,_ she thought, but if that was the root of it then she'd fix it. Being able to publish this kind of breakthrough would more than make up for it - she was certain of that much. 

It was as she was running through the deconstructor's recalibration that she heard the lab door swing open. She glanced up but only briefly, expecting it to be her husband since he'd been in and out most of the day. Instead, it was her son, and she turned most of her attention back to the stubborn deconstructor. "Hi, hon - how was school?" 

Danny was still halfway up the steps. He didn't seem to want to come down any further than that - he rarely did, when she or Jack were at work, and so she paid that little mind. When he spoke, though, it was the kind of quiet voice that made her pause. "Mom?" 

Maddie turned back to him. He was using the _please-don't-be-mad_ voice, which usually meant he'd gotten into trouble at school again, but when she gave him the once-over he was death-white. "Danny, what's this about? Are you feeling alright?" 

"There's something I have to tell you," said Danny all at once. He knew - he'd known for ages - that this wasn't going to be easy. If it was, he might not have put it off for so long; he'd made so many excuses for himself, and lied about it so many times just out of sheer _habit,_ that part of him had begun to assume he'd never come clean about it at all. That was the part of him that was ringing all the warning bells in his mind. _Keep your mouth shut! She doesn't ever have to know! It's a secret for a reason!_ Still, a secret like that couldn't be kept forever. 

Maddie knew at once that something was horribly, grievously wrong. She could see it in him - beyond the usual _I'm-going-to-be-in-trouble-for-this_ hesitation, even - and something deep in her gut grew cold. "Danny," it was all she could do to be calm for him, since she had to be, and she wasn't sure if he could be, "Danny, what happened? Something must have - you're not hurt, are you - ?" 

"Mom, you have to promise you won't freak out. It's really important, you have to promise me - " 

"Danny, what are you saying - " 

"You have to swear to me right now," Danny insisted, ignoring her and taking another step down. He was panicking, even though he was trying his best not to; his eyes kept darting to and from his mother, and she swore she heard his breath hitch even though he meant to keep it steady. "Swear to me right now. You won't be mad. You have to trust me." 

Maddie stiffened but was silent. In an instant, it went wholly beyond anything that he'd get into at school, and she found herself at a complete loss for words. Her mouth ran dry as the what-ifs began to crawl through her mind, and she couldn't swat them all away. "What's this that you have to tell me all of a sudden," she said finally - _you're supposed to be the rational one, aren't you? get yourself together_ \- and took a deep breath. "If it's this important, I have to know." 

Danielle peered slowly out from behind him. If either of her hands had still been intact, she might have given Maddie a nervous wave. As it was, she was silent and uncertain. 

"Danielle?" Maddie asked, gaze shifting between her and Danny. The compilation of analyses was still open on the work-table; the results had been conclusive in that the girl wasn't plagued by ghosts. She _was_ one - and more than that, she shared Danny's genes almost exactly. _How_ was beyond her, but it was suddenly clear that Danny knew more than she did. Given how upset he was, too, she had a feeling she'd have to coax it out of him. "Danny, why don't you tell me what happened. I'm sure there's something - " 

"I'll tell you everything," said Danny, and his hands balled at his sides so that they wouldn't tremble so badly. Danielle was right behind him; it was only because of her that he didn't relent. "You have to promise you'll trust me. That has to come first." 

Maddie hesitated, but only for a moment. What was she thinking? What kind of mother would she be if she didn't trust her own son? "Alright, Danny. I trust you. Whatever you tell me, I promise I won't be mad. I'm just worried. That's all. Now what's this about you bringing a ghost into the house?" 

"You have to help her," said Danny, "She's unstable and she's falling apart. I know you can do it, Mom, you have to fix her. She doesn't have much time left." 

"Well, I - " Maddie faltered. Somehow, this hadn't been what she had been expecting. "I don't know, it's just that it's a _ghost,_ and - !" 

Danny's eyes flashed. "_It_ nothing!" he cried, suddenly angry, and came down the rest of the steps into the lab. "It doesn't matter! She's just gonna melt away otherwise! I can't let that happen! Mom - _please,_ you have to help us, I can't lose her, not after everything - " 

"Everything?" 

Danny's gaze fell. He'd known this was coming. "This is what I meant when I said it was important. Just - " he couldn't say it. _Just don't let this make it worse._

Danny transformed. It was something he'd done a million times, and in a hundred different circumstances, and somehow this one was the worst. The first thing to quit was the pounding heartbeat; the sudden void was gut-wrenching, and the deepened silence of the lab was almost too much. In that instant, he knew that he'd been wrong. His own mother wouldn't help them. It was too late to take any of it back, and Danielle would melt away into nothing. Those and a thousand other things clamored in his head, and the unbearable pit of dread threatened to swallow him up. The secret that he'd kept for so long was out. 

Maddie was in shock. Her mind all but ground to a halt, and one hand came slowly up over her mouth. "My god. . . Danny, you're - " 

"I can tell you everything," pleaded Danny, meeting his mother's eyes at last, "But you have to save her. She doesn't have much time left. I don't even care what happens to me afterward - " 

Hearing that come out of him almost made Maddie sick on the spot. Her own son - a _ghost?_ Not just any ghost, she realized as her mind began to process again, he'd been the rogue hero Phantom _the entire time?_ She was suddenly acutely aware of everything she'd ever said about him - _to his face, no less_ \- and the instant he disregarded himself she knew she had failed him. "Danny, I. . ." 

"I know. I should have told you about this a long time ago," said Danny, dashing an eye with the back of one gloved sleeve, "I promised I'd tell you everything, remember? I mean it - Dani and I both will." 

Maddie's gaze fell to Danielle, who had gone almost deathly white. It was no wonder she'd taken such a strong and sudden fondness for her - she set off the same motherly instinct that Danny did, and somehow Maddie felt that she had failed them both. "She's like you, isn't she." 

"Mostly," said Danny, composing himself as well as he could, "But she's unstable. There's got to be something you can do. I swear, take whatever pieces out of me you want but she's - " 

Maddie threw her arms around him. Her composure was gone in an instant - _don't you dare let him think you'd ever hurt him_ \- and she didn't even care that she was bawling. _Danny, I'm so sorry, I never wanted you to think I'd hurt you, I'm sorry that you couldn't trust me, I'm sorry I wasn't there for you._ It all came out, unrefined and plain and in a tangled mess. Just that he hadn't trusted her meant she'd failed; could she ever hope to make up for all those months? 

She was glad, at the very least, that Danny allowed her to get everything out. Even in her arms he was like ice - dreadfully cold and stiff, and it wasn't until he returned the embrace that she began to think he might forgive her. _Might,_ nagged the guilt, but she'd take it. Finally, when she felt she might have cried herself out, she pulled herself away again. She gave Danny a little kiss on the forehead, and took a deep breath to clear her thoughts. "You said you'd explain everything. I'm trusting you on that one. Now, what's this about your little sister - she's unstable, is that it? Let's see if there isn't something we can do about that, shall we?" 

\- - - - 

The morph sample had done the trick. That, Danielle supposed, was really the only thing that Vlad had ever been wholly right about. For the first time in weeks, she _felt_ complete, and she'd been over the moon. She didn't have to worry about going to sleep and never waking back up - she could _fly_ again, and she'd gone out to town with reckless abandon. She and Danny both had, and for the first time - perhaps ever, that he'd seen - she was really enjoying herself. 

The questions had come after that, of course; they _had_ promised all the details. An extra chair had been pulled from the hall closet so that they could all sit at the kitchen table: Maddie, Jack, Jasmine, Danny, and now Danielle. The discussion began with Danny explaining about most of his ghost powers, and most of his escapades. He and Danielle teamed up to rat Vlad out; Jack was upset, which was to be expected, but he swore up and down that he'd have Danny's back from then on out, no matter what happened. Danny showed them the folder of notes on the various ghosts he'd encountered, and the map he'd drawn of the Ghost Zone - a starmap that had been drawn over with invisible ink that glowed under ectoplasmic light so that he could hide it in plain sight. Maddie kept an increasingly extensive list of modifications to be made to the lab downstairs and a lot of the equipment in it, as well as a handful of other things that she could throw together for Danny and Danielle. They'd go out together from then on, of course, and Maddie would excuse as many late notices from school as she needed to. She and Jack would patrol every other night - _even a ghost needs a day off,_ Jack said with a laugh. Even Jasmine would start to spend more time in the lab. Fighting ghosts wasn't as much up her alley as designing and building tools and weapons, and she had a few ideas of her own that she'd like to see put to use. 

The discussion took almost all night, and ended up over ice cream. Maddie adopted Danielle on the spot, and gave her the spare room. The fussing hen, at last, was satisfied, and of _course_ they'd help her paint it whatever color she wanted, the same as Danny and Jazz had. _Best to keep things fair,_ Maddie said - she was family now, after all.


End file.
